How To Gain More Instagram Followers By Hosting A Giveaway

Hosting giveaways is an underrated way of gaining followers. If done correctly, you can gain more than a hundred followers just by doing one giveaway. We’ll be talking about how to host giveaways to gain more followers by yourself, and how you can do so by hosting giveaways with others.

How to get more followers on Instagram by hosting giveaways

1. How to host a giveaway by yourself

Choose the giveaway product

If you want to host a giveaway by yourself, the first thing you need to figure out is what you want to give away. You can give away your product, an e-course, a book, a call with you, a gift card, or anything else you think would persuade people to follow you.

You can offer the product in any of these three ways:

1. Give away your product for free, and offer free shipping
2. Offer your product for free, and have the winner pay for shipping
3. Offer the best discount you can offer (i.e. a $200.00 e-course for $10.00)

Whatever you decide, the giveaway has to be the best thing you can offer. Of course, free things always work best.

Choose the rules

The most important thing about a giveaway is the rules. When you do a giveaway, you have to establish rules that permit people to enter. These rules are the epitome of buying a raffle ticket. You can establish different types of rules and have as many as you want.

There are two rules you need to have for people to enter your giveaway if you want to get the most possible followers from it. Your first rule needs to be, “Follow this account to enter.” Your second rule needs to be, “You must tag two people.” The latter doesn’t give them an extra ‘raffle ticket.’ It’s required for the one entry to count.

So, now you’ve got one follow. When that person tags two people they think would be interested in the giveaway, then those tagged people will have to follow you too, if they want to enter. It a cycle, and that’s just with that group of people. Others will do the same.

Here’s an example of rules:

1. Make sure you’re following @YourAccount
2. Tag 2 friends in the comments
3. Extra entry: Take a picture of this and post it on your story (Tag me)

Announce it

You have your giveaway product, and you’ve chosen your rules, so now you have to announce it on Instagram. You have to make two slides on the Instagram post. Your first picture will be the giveaway name and a picture of the item you’ll be giving away.

The second picture will have a list of the rules. You can see an example of both above. You have to give your giveaway a name. It doesn’t have to be spectacular—it can just be the name of your product—but name it something.

Make the rules clear and easy to read, and specify in the first picture that there are rules in the next picture. In the caption, write the rules, what the giveaway winner will win, and any extra information you’d like to mention. Give the giveaway an end date; the length is up to you.

Choose a winner

This is when the hard work kicks in. You‘ll have to go through all of the comments, and write them down in a website that will randomly choose a winner for you. If there are too many names, get someone to help.

Once you’ve inputted all the names in the random-name-picker, then you have to record your screen with your phone as you click ‘submit’, and capture the name of the winner. People want to make sure you’re not lying or cheating. Before you announce the winner on Instagram, you need to check if the winner followed all of the rules.

The winner could have easily commented, but maybe they forgot to like the picture. Thankfully, Instagram has the option to search for a username in the list of people who liked your giveaway picture, and for a follower in your ‘followers’ list. Search the person in both lists, and if they followed all of the rules, you can announce it.

If the person didn’t follow all the rules, record a new video in which you choose a new winner. Follow the same steps.

That’s it

Take a look at your ‘followers’ list after the giveaway. It’s likely that you’ve gained a lot more than you thought. You’re bound to lose a few followers once the giveaway is over, but it won’t be more than a handful.

2. How to host a giveaway with other people

The same rules apply to hosting a giveaway with others as when you host one by yourself. I recommend reading above, then read these extra guidelines for hosting a giveaway with other people.

• You must find a brand or business to do a giveaway with that does something related to what you do.
   
• When choosing your products to give away, they must all be correlated. You can do an “Ultimate Painter’s Giveaway” in which you give a paintbrush, and your partner, a course. You don’t want to host a giveaway where you give a paintbrush, and your partner, a scented candle. It’s random, makes no sense, and people won’t enter.
   
• When a person is entering the giveaway, they must follow the accounts of all the people participating as the hosts.
   
• Everyone has to agree with the rules, and post the giveaway content on their respective accounts.
   
• Everyone has to check their own comments, and write down the names. You’ll have to pick one person to input all of the names into the winner-generator.
   
• Announce the winner on all Instagram accounts. One person has to direct message the winner for the information needed to ship and so on.
   

The only difference between hosting a giveaway by yourself and with other brands is that you reach a lot more people, thus gain more followers, by working with others.